Chapter Twenty-Three

  Ulbert’s journey through the castle was a surprisingly banal affair. It wasn’t until they were halfway through the castle and on their way up a long set of spiral stairs that Sir Torald answered Ulbert’s unspoken confusion. “It’s because you look human, m’lord. While there are a few portraits of your noble self as a demon, drawn from what witnesses could recall, nobody but I know that you can appear as something else.”

  “Of course.” Ulbert said as if he hadn’t been wondering why nobody was reacting to the presence of a demon in the castle.

  Torald chuckled and elbowed him gently, it was a surprisingly affable gesture, and one that put a little smile on Ulbert’s face. “Just relax, m’lord. I’ll get you through the meeting of the Queen and court, remember, everybody here is grateful to you, some have probably already privately deified you in their own minds, even if they haven’t said it as openly as peasants have.”

  “And you? Am I still a god to you?” Ulbert asked as they walked along the crimson carpet of the long wide stone hall. Glowstones pulsed along the walls and lit up fine paintings that hung in even intervals, showing the glories of the human kingdom ruled by an inhuman woman.

  “If you like.” Torald said, “But if you’ll pardon me, m’lord, were it not for your power and status, I would prefer to call you ‘friend’. If that would not displease you.”

  “Then call me Ulbert.” Ulbert said with a sudden skip to his heart, friendship had been something long absent from his life, and to hear his escort speak as he did was far more welcome than he expected it to be.

  “Then call me, Torald.” Torald answered.

  “You have to be the bravest man in this world, to befriend a demon.” Ulbert remarked with little upturning of the left corner of his mouth.

  “You avenged my brothers and saved my country, by a knight’s code, if you asked for my very life as a reward, it would be yours for the taking. Friendship by comparison, that’s easy.” Torald answered the demon with a mirthless, grave face, “In the world of men, lord of demons, true companions are the greatest treasure, and there is no greater love than laying one’s own life down for his friends.”

  “My own friends and I used to say something like that…” Ulbert said and lost himself in a moment’s memory of their peak before it all fell apart, and he lost himself so thoroughly in his remembrance that he didn’t even realize they’d stopped walking and were staring at a great double door that rose as high as the ceiling itself.

  The guards on either side glanced at the pair, and Torald introduced himself, “Sir Torald Haroldson, here to meet with Her Majesty, I bring with me the hero who destroyed the beastmen.”

  The two guards stood in full plate armor, helmets down and long halberds across their bodies, gripped both hands, and they glanced at Torald, then again at Ulbert…

  And bowed.

  “I will notify her. Wait here.” The left handed guard said, and the door groaned open a little to allow him in.

  There was no need to wait for confirmation. “Are you mad?! Let him in at once!” The door rattled audibly from her booming voice.

  “She’s actually very ah… polite.” Torald cleared his throat like he was trying to cover the noise of a man scurrying and scrambling in full plate armor.

  The towering doors groaned as they were pulled wide apart, exposing the full court of the Queen of the Draconic Kingdom to Ulbert’s eyes. The throne itself was not really the sort of thing he’d come to expect after having been groomed on so many fantasy stories over the years of his life. It was made of golden wood and had a purple lining to the back and to the seat, both of which were stuffed to make it more comfortable to sit in. Notably, there was only one of them, there wasn’t another throne for a King to sit beside her.

  That in and of itself said volumes to Ulbert. The court was in other ways, quite ordinary, nobles in fine formal clothing congregated in clusters around a long, wide hall, a scarlet rug ran up to within ten paces of the Queen, and by her side stood two very different figures.

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  One, a man of aging years, wisps of white hair and a weary expression with a hard life worth of wrinkles across his face. He wore armor, right enough, halfplate rather than full, and held a sword at his side. On the Queen’s left hand stood a woman, she wore armor that matched the older human’s, but she had a faint ‘tip’ to her ears suggesting elven ancestry.

  A few paces away from the Queen at the front right stood a minister with short brown hair and a flowing blue robe far different from those of the rest of the court. In his hand there was a flat piece of wood on which a few documents sat. ‘That’s this world’s equivalent of a clipboard or I will eat my tophat.’ Ulbert thought to himself as they began to walk over the long rug to take position.

  The Queen herself was a woman of early middle years, likely her thirties, if Ulbert were to guess, ‘Then again, magic exists, so who can say?’ He thought and put the rude question to the back of his mind. Her eyes had a peculiar bluish glow to them, and her skin was fairly pale, with tumbling blonde hair down her back, she wore a dress of white silk emblazoned with the color of a platinum dragon across her chest that matched the banners on the wall.

  When they reached the end of the carpet he felt Torald’s hand lightly touch his wrist, and he stopped himself at almost the exact same moment. Torald went down to one knee and bowed his head. “Sir Torald Haroldson, my Queen, reports success in finding the hero responsible for the expulsion of the beastmen from our lands.”

  Queen Draudillon looked at the pair, “Perhaps I am incorrect, but I was given to understand that the one who drove out the beastmen was a demon. Was this false, or just an exaggeration? He appears to be completely human.”

  “I am in fact, a demon, Your Majesty.” Ulbert felt his inner chuunibyou rising once again, he took his tophat in one hand and made a low, sweeping bow. “I took this form to minimize the distress and chaos that come with my natural look. But if it pleases you as the host…” He dispelled the appearance, and the gasps of the court went up. Notably, he realized that she made not a peep.

  He straightened up and put his tophat back on his head.

  “So it is true. You are a demon.” Queen Draudillon said it quietly, looking him up and down.

  “I am who I always was.” He said as he began to get more into his character, “I assume that is not an issue, after all, was I not invited here out of gratitude?”

  “You were, and I am grateful. But you are not what I expected, and I have no idea how to properly reward a demon short of a human sacrifice.” Queen Draudillon’s heart raced. She’d been around charismatic men before, and she’d been around loathsome wretches before. And she expected a demon to be closer to the latter, like Cerebrate, than the former, like the gods were said to be, and her impolitic joke, was the result of her feeling utterly thrown off by the specter of a being she did not imagine was even possible not even three months ago.

  “That is a very strange way of proposing marriage, Queen Draudillon.” Ulbert said, and when he realized he could hear a pin drop within the throne room… right before the gasps went up… from everywhere except the throne…

  It was the first time in his life he cursed his chuunibyou habits.

  Senda clung to the coin like a drowning man to a lifeline. If there was anyone behind him, he saw no sign of it. ‘I’ve put some distance between Sasbay and I by now… guards aren’t that particular about refugees or what happens to them, so I should be fine. But then, where did I go?’ He asked himself and took his first real look around.

  He’d run blind for what felt like hours, avoiding roads and sticking to the forest. It wasn’t until he was well and truly alone, and sure of it, that he shouted, “I didn’t do it!” His voice echoed over what felt like the whole world as he took in his surroundings. The hard dirt packed road in front of him was as wide as it was empty, with no one near for miles and miles. Broken leaves and brambles littered his clothing, his feet hurt, his lungs were still burning, and his cry of innocence had done nothing to help that.

  ‘Nobody will believe me. Nobody will ever believe it was an accident, ‘his’ accident. I’ll be hunted for the rest of my life, I’ll need a new name, new life, I can probably stay alive if I just go far enough…’ Senda looked back over his shoulder, his old life was surely over, there would never be any going that way again. Of course he had to hope nobody was actively seeking him now.

  ‘Nobody will believe you. Not ever.’ He felt the whispering taunt down to his bones, and stepped a little ways back into the woods. ‘Better avoid people for now… I can go farther tomorrow, forget the next town over though, I’ll go into the Slane Theocracy, nobody will be looking for me there, and I can start over, and buy a farm of my own… just never speak of it again, and nobody will ever know what happened…’ He thought privately as he crouched down to huddle beneath the boughs of a great, ancient tree that thrust up to the sky like a spear.

  ‘Nobody would believe you anyway. They’ll hate you. They’ll despise you. They’ll kill you as a murderer of the defenseless.’

  ‘I didn’t do it.’ He replied to the voice in his head, and argued with it well into the night until exhaustion finally set in, and he fell asleep weeping for himself with his head down in the soft dirt. ‘At least this feels good.’ Was his final thought before sleep claimed him.